Rob Pattinson Made How Much For Breaking Dawn?

There’s a pretty ugly Twilight-related lawsuit going on right now. Basically, multiple companies who worked on financing the film and shared in its profits are going back-and-forth over which is ultimately responsible to pay for the bonuses various members of the cast and crew earned. Because it doesn’t directly involve bad blood between any of the actors and actresses it hasn’t drawn a whole lot of attention. Luckily for fans who like to snoop, however, it does indirectly involve plenty of famous people, and a few juicy little facts have come out—like Rob Pattinson’s salary.

According to TMZ, Pattinson was paid $25 million for the two-part Breaking Dawn finale, plus an unknown percentage of profits to be paid down the road. That’s significantly more than any of the actors not named Robert Downey Jr got for The Avengers, but there’s actually a very clear reason for that.

Lionsgate/ Summit always hoped Twilight would have franchise potential, but when Pattinson and Stewart boarded the first movie, they apparently weren’t locked into ironclad contracts. So, they were both later able to go to the negotiating table with a ton of bargaining power. In fact, the two reportedly secured $300,000 bonuses and then additional $2.5 million bonuses for the first movie once it became a gigantic hit. As such, their salaries vaulted higher and higher until Pattinson was able to secure that $25 million figure for the last go-around.

With those paydays, you would have thought Lionsgate/ Summit would have secured a really positive attitude from Pattinson, but apparently, the actor’s mood and his wallet are not directly connected, as you can see in this hilarious montage of awful interview performances…

When it comes to franchises adapted from popular books, the level of compensation people deserve is a bit of a tricky subject. For example: when Tom Cruise opens something like Mission Impossible and it brings in crazy amounts of money at the box office, we know much of that credit should go to him. But with something like Twilight or Harry Potter, it’s more complicated. How much less money would those films have made if Edward was played by Dane Dehan or if Harry was played by Miles Teller? We’ll never know.

It remains to be seen whether Pattinson will be able to translate his Twilight success into a long-term A-list career opening high end films? For his sake, I hope he takes care of this $25 million check until the answer to that question becomes a definite yes.